Outdoor ‘indoor’ soccer team plays fast-paced game

1of4Oscar Ruvalcaba and his son, Oscar Jr., run the Brownsville Barracudas FC, an indoor soccer team which plays at the teams outdoor complex in rural Cameron County, near Brownsville.Photo: Roy Bragg /San Antonio Express-News

2of4Oscar Ruvalcaba, owner/coach of the Brownsville Barracudas indoor soccer team, gives last-minute instructions to staffers before a Saturday night game against a Major Arena Soccer League opponent from Sonora, Mexico.Photo: Roy Bragg / San Antonio Express-News

3of4Jesus Muniz dressed at Barracudas the FC mascot, known to the crowd as Patulero, who patrols the sideline as the Barracudas FC plays its Major Arena Soccer League games.Photo: Roy Bragg /San Antonio Express-News

4of4Fans watch players warm up before the match between the Brownsville Barracudas FC and the Sole de Sonora. The teams play in the Major Arena Soccer League, which plays most games under a roof on a shorter field. Brownsville, however, plays on the league’s only outdoor “indoor” field.Photo: Roy Bragg /San Antonio Express-News

BROWNSVILLE — It’s the fourth quarter and the hometown Barracudas are being stomped 6-2 by Soles de Sonora and hosed by the trio of referees.

The raucous crowd of 300 or so fans in attendance at Barracuda Soccer complex — a series of indoor soccer-sized fields, out in the boonies near the airport and inexplicably outdoor — have seen enough.

They’ve cheered, sang and tossed out gritos for the entire game. The refs have let the guys play. But as the fourth begins, the refs discover their blue cards. A blue card gets a player sent to a penalty box for two minutes.

After the fourth Barracuda is sent to the box, a woman four seats down, who has been singing, making police siren noises and cheering all night, lets loose with an angry tirade in Spanish. She is holding her grandson as she does this.

Down in the front row, fans who’ve been beating a drum and wielding noisemakers begin chanting at the referees. It’s also in Spanish, but even I know it’s not good. I know that because when the high school boys sitting next to me hear it, some shake their heads. The others bury their face in their hands.

That said, watching my first Major Arena Soccer League match was more fun than I’ve had at a sporting event in years. Part of that is due to the the authenticity of the event and the earnest effort put forth by Oscar Ruvalcaba, 50, the team owner and coach, and his son Oscar Jr., 21.

But a lot of that has to do with the miniaturized, rocket-fueled version of the beautiful game that’s known as indoor soccer. It’s fast and there are a lot of shots on goal.

Played with six players on each side, the teams battle in a game that’s part soccer and part ice hockey. It’s played on a field that’s the same size as an NHL ice rink, although this field seems smaller. The whole field is ringed by boards. The goal is cut out of the back wall that runs the width of the field.

Players bank passes off the back wall. They crash into the boards with regularity. One highlight came when two guys were chasing down a ball and flattened themselves against the back wall like a cartoon coyote.

The soccer is pretty good, too. The Brownsville team was faster and more technically proficient in terms of dribbling and passing, but the Mexican players were blue-collar guys who out-hustled the Americans. They pressed on defense and contended for every stray pass.

The Barracudas FC proves the “American Dream” hasn’t gone anywhere.

The team began as a barnstorming amateur club a decade ago. Now, it’s a member of a league with teams that stretch across the nation and dip into another.

Ruvalcaba Sr. grew up playing in Matamoros, but gave up hopes for a professional career because of his schoolwork.

Even as he ran a medical equipment company in Brownsville, he remained in touch with the game. He coached teams in different age groups all over the Rio Grande Valley, but still dreamed of pro soccer.

Ruvalcaba founded Barracudas Football Club in 2004. It ran youth teams all over the Valley and a handful of teams for teens and adults at the soccer complex.

Indoor soccer, with its smaller field and regional leagues, appealed to him. He started the Brownsville Indoor Soccer League to teach the game to the community. When an MASL team in nearby Hidalgo failed three years ago, Ruvalcaba asked that his Barracudas club be allowed to take its place.

“They came to us,” said Kevin Milliken, an MASL official. “I flew down there and met with Oscar and Oscar Jr. and came away impressed. They’re great guys and that location has got potential.”

The professional indoor soccer landscape is littered with the desiccated carcasses of teams and the limp, confusing acronyms of dead leagues.

For years, the Major Indoor Soccer League (MISL) was the dominant league in its niche. The Major Arena Soccer League (MASL) was its feeder system. Then MISL died and the MASL — then called the Professional Arena Soccer League — moved up a notch. The MASL is now the big dog and the Premier Arena Soccer League is its affiliate system. Got all of that?

As currently constituted, the MASL has 20 teams, including three in Mexico. There are teams in major cities such as Dallas, San Diego, Chicago and Milwaukee, as well as smaller markets such as Harriburg, Pennsylvania; Turlock, California; and Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

Brownsville, Milliken said, is an outlier in many ways. It has the smallest crowds and the only outdoor arena in the league. It’s not really an arena, per se, but rather two sides of covered bleachers.

The MASL averages 2,600 fans per game while Brownsville usually draws 600. Milliken wants Brownsville to step up on the marketing side of the business, but Ruvalcaba, who is the sole investor in the team, admits that it’s been a problem.

“I don’t know why,” he said. “This is the only professional team here.”

The league, trying to catch the new wave of soccer popularity in the United States, has 16 new markets under consideration. San Antonio is one of them, Milliken said, but finding an arena without pushback from the current occupants — (cough) Spurs (cough) — is a major stumbling block.

Down in the Valley, Ruvalcaba is upbeat despite the loss.

“We want to win,” he said, “but we also want people to have a good time.”